MILLER IS TOO GOOD A NAME

by Leonore Hildebrandt

When waxing philosophical 
about the older days, 
a good miller has no reason to say 

it’s been a Western aberration
to grant rights to foreign workers. 
But this one does?

After colonizing, 
this miller wants to decolorize, 
to remake the country 

pallid, blanched, white.
To keep the lowest caste,
a dispensable underclass. 

There’s no life in it. 
A young boy blenches in fear. 
These mean words will be milled–– 

crushed and ground.
Washed out, they'll be left to fade

like the bones bleaching in the desert.

Leonore Hildebrandt has published four collections of poetry: Somewhere the Day Begins, The Work at Hand, The Next Unknown, and Where You Happen to Be. Her poems and translations appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Cafe Review, Cerise Press, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, Harpur Palate, New Letters, Plant Human Quarterly, Poetry Daily, Poetry Salzburg Review, Rhino, and Sugar House Review among other journals. Nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, she was a finalist for the Maine Writers and Publishers Award in Poetry in 2024. Originally from Germany, Leonore is an editor, gardener, song-writer, and musician, spending her time in Harrington, Maine, and Silver City, NM.

DO NOT RETURN TO SENDER

by Jen Schneider




Prison lights shine as armed guards speaking in a foreign tongue
watch our every move. Five steps right. Two left. Eat, bathe, sleep.
Idle minds wander, thinking of sacred worlds outside and now out
of reach. Snatched quickly. Dreams of warm chicken broth, sizzling
beef, and crisp air evaporate. Quickly. Songs of pregnant red robins,
schoolyard children, and bustling roadways fade. Quickly.
Idle souls longing for coverage on local news in now foreign lands
that were once home. Thoughts wander then quickly snap to attention.
A single tear drops. Wiped away, quickly. No time for weakness.
Too much work to be done. Dry, chapped
hands work under camera focused eyes.
Tired hands fold parchment, count envelopes,
and seal plastic box lids. Twenty four cards
to a pack. Count - quickly. No more, no less.
Hurry. Faster. Quickly. Now.  24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
In concrete cells with no wires to the world outside
and where commissaries sell no stamps.

Prison labor pleas
inked on holiday greetings.
Addressee unknown.

Questions of free will
inked on holiday greetings.
Seeking Christmas cheer.

Holiday surprise.
Do Not return to sender.
Forward message Please.

… Quickly

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Coil, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, 42 Stories Anthology (forthcoming), Voices on the Move (forthcoming), Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.